


Not for a year (but ever and a day)

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Missing Scene, Peggy POV, and a tiny smidge of angst, shameless fluff I tell you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 03:36:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6178753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy Carter hopes that she's not in love with Daniel Sousa, but she has a feeling that she's already far gone. (Or, what comes between defeating the villain and the happily ever after.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not for a year (but ever and a day)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Our Love Is Here to Stay"

Peggy hopes that she's not in love with Daniel Sousa. She really does. She hopes that the sharp twist in her heart whenever she catches sight of him and the electricity that spirals down her spine and floods through to the tips of her fingers don't mean anything. That the fact that she would have folded if Jason had pulled a gun on him instead doesn't mean anything. Because they can't mean anything.

Because bad things have a way of happening to people that Peggy Carter loves.

After it's all over, after the explosions and the arrests and the messy, complicated work of cleaning up that always seems to take longer than the actual mission, she tells herself that she needs to go back to New York. The SSR needs her, Angie has been sending her postcards of the Empire State Building asking her what it's like in sunny California and if she can put in a good word for her with Howard Stark's movie studio, and back in New York, sometimes she can still turn a corner and think that she glimpses a skinny boy from Brooklyn out of the corner of her eye. But Los Angeles is warm where New York is cold and ridiculous as the palm trees are, she thinks she might be becoming fond of them. Howard is here, just as ridiculous as the palm trees and somehow able to inspire even more fondness in her. Mr. Jarvis is here too, and Ana, and the enormous Bernese mountain dog they've just acquired. Sometimes she even imagines writing a postcard back to Angie and promising that she'll talk Howard into giving her a role in his next movie.

And, most of all, Daniel is here, kind eyes and steady hands and a smile that sends her head and heart jolting off into madness. Because she is used to self-sacrifice and the idea of someone being ready to throw away an entire mission just for her is more terrifying than she would like it to be. Because her life has been the war effort and then the SSR since Steve died and she's not sure how other things would fit. And because, worst of all, every time that she sees him, she can't help thinking that he might be in love with her. It's...distracting.

“Peggy, did you find that report?” he asks, frowning over one of the never-ending piles of paperwork that seem to have sprouted up around the office just as quickly as hopefuls appear in the lobby of their false talent agency to bother Rose.

“I think it might be in the pile by the window,” she says. _And you might be in love with me._

“Tell me, what am I supposed to do when you head out? Might drown in the all the paperwork around here.” Daniel grins at her.

“I'm not leaving for a little while yet. California's growing on me,” Peggy says lightly. “It turned out to be a dry heat, after all.”

“It's not nearly as bad down by the ocean. Did you ever go out to the beach? I'm surprised that Stark hasn't bought a house out there yet.” He looks so pleased with himself that she decides not to tell him that Howard has already sent Jarvis out scouting in Malibu for a house next to Ava Gardner's.

“Funnily, when you're busy trying to stop all of Los Angeles from going up in smoke, there isn't much time for the beach,” she replies. 

“Los Angeles looks pretty good to me. Come on, I'll take you over to Santa Monica for the day. You can win me a stuffed duck at the shooting gallery,” he offers. 

“A stuffed duck? I should think my SOE training would mean at least a stuffed bear.” It does. The stuffed bear she wins him is massive, almost bigger than Daniel, and people shoot them plenty of odd looks when they try to stuff it into the boot of the car. Peggy just smiles politely and waves at them, and the moment they hear her proper British accent, they usually melt away. (She should really ask Mr. Jarvis if Americans are strange about his accent too.)

“You won me a bear, so I think that I owe you an ice cream,” Daniel says as he shuts the boot with a decisive thunk. There's still the tip of a furry bear ear sticking out but she rather likes the look of it. 

“You don't owe me anything. But I'll still accept an ice cream. As long as you get one too,” she adds and can't suppress a smile at the thought of Daniel with ice cream on his nose. 

“You sure about it? I think I owe you quite a lot for saving my life.”

“Anyone would have done the same.” Anyone wouldn't have been able to bear the idea of a world without him in it. She's only known Daniel Sousa for a few years but in that moment when he was being sucked into the rift, she shut her eyes and tried to imagine a world without his quiet strength and kind eyes. And she decided that a world without Daniel Sousa would be significantly worse, would be paler and quieter and somehow less, than one with him in it.

“All right, then. Lead on, Agent Carter.” He extends his arm to her and slowly, they make their way down the boardwalk together. Daniel does look ridiculous with chocolate ice cream on his nose, as it turns out, and the sound of his laugh is warm and round and fills her up even more than the ice cream does.

It's then, with the sun slanting down on her face and the smell of salt in the air, that she _knows_ that she loves him. She's not sure if it's a disaster or a miracle.

When Peggy walks into his office, she means to tell him that she's leaving. She really does. If only because the SSR expenses bureau would be quite cross with her for missing another flight. But then he looks at her. Just looks, like he could never get tired of looking. And she knows that bad things have a way of happening to the people she loves, but something fierce wells up inside her and she knows that she won't let anything bad happen to him.

So she kisses him, with everything she has, holding on to him with every intention of never letting go. And, as they sink back into his chair, his heart beating steadily against hers as he kisses her back, she thinks that just maybe, they were always going to end up here. Maybe he was going to be hers from the first moment she walked into the SSR office and he glanced up and smiled at her, from the first time she noticed him smiling at her. 

And, just maybe, they're going to be each other's for the rest of their lives.


End file.
